Chapter Five
Chapter Five
J enna had always promised herself that she would not paint the days that Amber and Kelly were there. In the past, a week without the brushes in her hands or her thumb tucked into a palette of paint had not been a problem. But that Wednesday night, after her friends had gone up to their rooms, she needed to escape into her world of blending oils and creating something. So much had been dropped on her in such a short time—both of her friends leaving the United States, and the feelings that Carson had woken up—that her emotions felt like they were on a roller coaster. She fought the battle and thought she had won when she went to bed, closed her eyes, and tried to make herself fall asleep. The harder she tried to blank out everything, the wider awake she became, until she finally got out of bed and paced the floor.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, as she went out to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of wine, and carried it outside. She eased down into one of her Adirondack chairs and popped the cork. She had started to pour some of the strawberry wine into the red plastic cup when she felt someone or something staring at her. She looked around to see if a raccoon or possum had come snooping around but found Amber sitting on the porch swing.
“So, you couldn’t sleep either?” Amber asked.
“Nope,” Jenna answered. “Wine?”
“Love some.” Amber reached for the bottle and drank out of it. “I never pictured you for a cheap date,” she said, as she handed the bottle back to Jenna.
“How did you picture me?” Jenna drank the little bit in the cup and took a long swig from the bottle.
“I figured that you had money until you said that about that lady, Miz Ramona, leaving you a scholarship and paying for you to go to Paris. If you came from a wealthy family, you wouldn’t have needed that, and you wouldn’t be living in a remote cabin like this,” Amber answered.
“Life is complicated,” Jenna said.
“I heard that last comment,” Kelly said, as she came out onto the porch and sat down on the other end of the swing. “What makes life complicated, and why are y’all having a party without me?”
“We can’t sleep, so we’re sharing a bottle of cheap wine,” Amber answered. “Evidently, all of us are having trouble sleeping tonight.”
Jenna passed the bottle over to Kelly, and she turned it up. “I’m not sure one bottle is going to knock us all on our butts.”
“There’s plenty more where that one came from, but only one more is chilled,” Jenna replied. “And life is complicated, at least for me, because I feel change in the air, and the rut I’ve carved out for myself these last ten years is so comfortable.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can leave it.”
“Sure you can.” Kelly handed the bottle off to Amber. “It’s easy. You just pack up the past and burn it, then you unpack the future and start living it.”
“What’s the first thing you did when you burned the past?” Jenna asked.
“My past and yours are different, but I finally accepted the fact that I was not responsible for my twin sister’s death. Something I haven’t told either of you is that I went to her grave and yelled at her for cheating me out of having her in my life, for having a friend, and maybe even a family. I was afraid to have a lasting relationship after seeing her fail at so many, or to have kids. After I threw my fit, I forgave her, because hate and love can’t live in the same heart.”
Amber passed the bottle to Jenna. “I miss my kids and Ethan. That’s why I can’t sleep. I want to be here with y’all. I need to be here for the final closure. But that doesn’t keep me from missing having Ethan beside me when I wake up in the morning, or making breakfast for Lisa and Ian before we get dressed and go play in the park for an hour. Leaving behind my old rut for this new one is wonderful.”
Jenna took a drink and then sighed. “I’m so glad you’ve both fully made it past all the stages of grief.”
“What can we do to help you take that final step?” Kelly asked.
“We can just be here to support her,” Amber answered for her. “That’s one step that a person has to take on their own if it’s going to work.”
“Yep,” Kelly said. “You got that right. Now pass me that wine and tell Jenna that we know that she’s a famous artist.”
Jenna almost choked on the swallow of wine she had just taken. “How . . . when . . . what . . .” she sputtered.
“We kind of figured it out years ago, but we didn’t want to intrude on your privacy,” Kelly answered. “We eavesdropped on your conversation with Carson, and that sealed the deal. Actually, we were hoping to see a make-out session, but we got disappointed on that.”
“I don’t go to galleries, and wouldn’t know a Picasso from one of Ian’s color sheets, but Ethan knows a little about art. His folks have a reproduction of one of your pieces hanging in their foyer. I recognized it from the one you were working on the first year we came here. That’s the way I found out, and I told Kelly,” Amber said.
“It was your secret to keep, but now it’s out,” Kelly said. “Is that what your banking job is all about?”
“No, it’s . . .”—Jenna shook her head—“I own that Mona Gallery in Houston and a few others here in the state. I’m a trust-fund kid, and what I do on the computer is run those businesses.”
Telling them was so liberating that it felt as if a weight had been lifted from her soul. Still, she liked her privacy and self-proclaimed hermit lifestyle so much that she didn’t want to share that news with anyone else.
“We kind of figured you had an inheritance of some kind,” Amber said.
“Money can’t buy happiness,” Jenna muttered.
“Amen to that,” Kelly agreed, as she took a drink and passed the bottle over to Amber.
Amber finished off the wine, stood up, and headed across the porch. “I’ll get the second bottle. I’m not sleepy yet, and we don’t have to get up before the crack of dawn tomorrow to go for crepes. I’ll make brunch when we are all up and around. I’m missing cooking for the family more than a little.”
She returned in a few minutes and handed the bottle to Jenna. “I never can get the top off, whether it’s a twist-off or a cork.”
“I’m ready,” Jenna said. “I’ve put it off long enough. Let’s go put Mama’s ashes in the lake like she wanted me to do.”
“Right now?” Amber asked.
“No!” Kelly reached for the bottle in Jenna’s hands. “I want you to sleep on this tonight, Jenna. If you still want to do this tomorrow, we will, but your mother deserves respect. We should be dressed in something other than pajama bottoms and T-shirts, and we should have music and maybe say a few words.”
“You are right,” Jenna said, “but I’m ready to do this now, so let’s plan it at sunrise. Mama loved to sit on the porch and watch the sun come up when we came to the lake for the summer. Tomorrow would be a perfect time, since the weekenders will start to arrive on Friday, and even in the early morning, things won’t be quiet.”
Amber stood up and took the bottle from Jenna. “This can go back in the fridge, and we really should get some sleep, since we’ll be getting up in about five hours. Good night, my friends.”
Kelly followed her into the house. “Good night. Shall we meet on the porch around six o’clock? And afterwards, we can talk more about Carson and the glow you get in your face when he’s around.”
“You are seeing what you want to see, not what is reality,” Jenna said.
“We’ll see about that.” Amber blew her a kiss as she went into the house.
She waited until Kelly and Amber had gone upstairs, and heard the bedroom doors close before she went to the living room and took the urn from the fireplace mantel. She carried it into her bedroom on the ground floor and set it on the nightstand.
“Promise me that when your ashes have gone back to nature for good, you won’t stop popping into my head with advice when I need it,” she whispered.
My child, I will never forsake you. I will be in your heart forever. Marsha’s calm voice whispered softly. Let me go. Learn to truly live again, and most of all, learn to trust.
Jenna laid a hand on the top of the urn. Kelly had been right. Her mother needed more than a trip to the lake in the middle of the night. It was past time to let her go, but it should be done with respect.